72 Hours With Lois Lane
by Abvj
Summary: There's something there, simmering below the surface like an itch Lois can't quite scratch. Clois. One shot. Set in Season Four.


_**Disclaimer: **Smallville and all related elements, characters and © Tollin-Robbins Productions and Warner Bros. Television, All Rights Reserved. This is a work of fiction, no infringement is intended, no profit is being made. _

**Author's note: **One shot. Focuses mainly on Lois, because while I'm not ED's biggest fan, I love Lois no matter who is playing her. Season four, sometime after _Devoted _where Lois returns to school. Vague Season four spoilers, but nothing really significant. References to Chloe's "secret" will be dealt with in a piece that will be posted some time next week. I swear, just when I start thinking I'm done with this fandom... It just pulls me back in.

XxX

* * *

XxX

A package arrives on Friday morning and the RA is knocking down her door after her one-thirty class because the package is too big to fit in her mailbox and it really is too much of an inconvenience to walk the twenty steps to her dorm and place it in front of the door.

According to Tracy, who likes to yell instead of talk at a normal octave, the box has been sitting there for two days.

"Lois can't you just pick up your mail like a normal person?"

Lois chews on her gum loudly in hopes the girl would find it annoying and leave. Didn't dare comment that Lois never got mail which is why she hadn't known the package was there. Takes the big brown box and kicks the door shut behind her-- hopefully right in Tracy's face.

There's not a return address, and the scrawl isn't familiar in the least, but she still opens it, immediately catches the tantalizing smell of chocolate chip cookies and fudge brownies that makes her mouth water.

Off to the side there's a piece of paper, folded and then folded again. Lois bypasses the brownies and grabs the paper, unfolding it hastily.

Reads it once, and then again. Then once more. Drops it down next to the box and re-reads it again.

_Lois-_

_Mom suggested we send you these. Hope school is going well. _

_Clark_

Lois laughs as she pushes the paper aside, imagines the look on Clark's face as he wrote the letter, how much he must have _hated_ doing it. How much of an inconvenience it must have been for him.

She takes a bite of the brownie-- the double fudge brownie-- and decides she really didn't care. Martha Kent was just _that _good of a cook.

**xXx**

Lacy, her roommate who just happens to be the top girl in her pledge class for the Alpha Gamma Delta Met U chapter, asks Lois to go shopping Saturday afternoon. Lois goes because writing her paper on Communism in the post World War II period is less appealing then the new pair of shoes she's been eyeing for the last week.

They have lunch in the mall cafeteria and Lois buys her shoes thanks to Daddy's credit card that he started paying for again the day she enrolled at Met U. They're black stilettos that were sexy enough to make her feel good about herself and sensible enough to make her feel comfortable. She contemplates wearing them around the mall for a little bit, to break them in, but decides she better not and instead watches as Lacy flirts her way into a fifteen percent discount on a hundred dollar dress that wouldn't look good on her anyway.

Lois keeps that little bit of information to herself because while she isn't exactly Lacy's biggest fan, she was her ride, and Lois really doesn't feel like walking home. The blonde bombshell looks harmless on the outside, but what nobody really knew was she was the one who single-handedly vandalized the Zeta Phi sorority house earlier that semester.

Thinking about it makes Lois laugh because picturing Lacy-- all five feet, four inches of her in her three inch heels and manicured nails egging houses and spray painting cars is a pretty funny image. Rumor on campus is the total damage added up to total thousands of dollars, but Lois has a hard time believing that.

The girl can't even make Easy Mac.

They return back to their dorm around three, and there are two messages on the machine. She thinks maybe it's her father, or Lucy even, but it's not. The first one is a hang up-- Chloe's number. Then, "Hey Lois, it's me," there is a slight pause, and the faint sounds of her receiver being covered can heard. An unfamiliar, male voice in the background that Lois can't make out and then: "I know I was suppose to come up this weekend but I can't, Dad's home…" she trails off, and all that's heard is Lois's cousins' deep intake of air. "Maybe next weekend, call me when you get this."

Lois's finger hovers over the delete button; her red nails are chipped, reminding her they need painting. Chloe is lying, that much she knows, and the temptation to call her back is tempting but she deletes the message anyway. Drops the single shopping bag and purse to floor and collapses onto her bed. Tries to figure out why Chloe is lying to her, what exactly she is hiding. What secret she is keeping.

It's a guy, that much she is sure of-- the note she received a few weeks ago, the phone calls she would get every once in a while that would cause her voice to lower, the immediate exit from the room. Lois has not asked in spite of the numerous opportunities she has had to do so, because she had thought Chloe would tell her eventually. Be honest with her. And well, talking about Chloe's love life means talking about her own-- and that means dealing with the brunt of Clark Kent jokes that were getting very old, very fast.

Lois decides after a few moments that her head hurts too much from thinking about it. Closes her eyes and lets the faint sounds of some show Lacy was watching on the TV lure her to sleep.

**xXx**

Her dad calls on Sunday like clockwork, around noon-- the same time every Sunday of every week of every month. If Lois was younger and her mother was still alive it would even be the same time they would be attending Sunday services, Lois constantly kicking Lucy's feet to make sure her younger sister stayed awake during Father Patrick's tediously long sermons.

Lacy leaves sometime around noon to spend the day with her boyfriend, and Lois sits in front of her computer and begins to write her paper on communism that was due first thing the next morning. She has done nothing but sleep and shop since Friday night, and yet she still finds she is more exhausted than ever. But she won't let herself go back to bed, finishes half her paper, and decides to call Chloe.

Leaves a message when she doesn't pick up, and dials another number instead.

Lucy doesn't pick up either-- is probably sleeping due to the time difference Lois had failed to figure out before the call, and Lois doesn't bother leaving a message. Her little sister lived in her own little world, and nothing ever slowed her down unless she needed something.

It is times like these that are the hardest-- when Lacy is gone and the silence of the dorm room echoes around her. It is funny because she has been dragged around by her father for ages, following him to base after base, and for the longest time she couldn't wait to get away. To be on her own, have her own life.

Despite her protests Smallville had not been as bad as she made it out to be. It had given her all the things she has wanted-- time with her cousin - who was her sister in more ways than the one who was thousands miles away - her own life, time by herself. She'd enjoyed her time in Smallville, but also could not wait until it was over. Until she could leave.

Smallville had been suffocating almost as much as it was liberating. It was too small for her, too quaint… and Lois is a firm believer that you can't live in a town that doesn't have a Starbucks. It just isn't possible.

Only now as she leans back in her chair and surveys her surroundings - Lacy's cluttered walls and bright bedspread such a contrast to her own - she feels alone. Suffocated like she had when she was in Smallville working at _The Torch_ and attending classes alongside Chloe and Lana.

Lois closes her eyes and imagines the large fields, the streets that emptied after nine o'clock. Pictures the beautiful blue sky and fresh air that accompanied it. Lois imagines the Kent farm and starts to feel that same suffocating feeling start to loosen it's hold on her.

She reaches for the phone again, picks it up, starts to dial a number from memory. Wonders what Clark would say if she just called him up out of the blue. If he would even talk to her at all.

Lois hangs up the phone with sigh before she's even finished punching in the area code.

It is fleeting - her moment of self pity - and as soon as it's over she goes back to her paper. Lois is determined to finish it before Lacy returned because listening to her roommate talk baby talk with her boyfriend was even worse than listening to them having the 'you hang up' first conversation.

People thought it was cute, and Lois guesses in some twisted way it was, but it really cramped her cynical style.

**xXx**

Two things happen Sunday night that shouldn't have.

One, Lois never finishes her paper.

Two, which is the reason one ever happened, Eric James shows up at her door and asks her to go with him to the Pike party across campus.

"It will be fun, I promise," he says as if it would mean something or sway her decision making process at all.

She has never been one for sororities, but she has to admit the fraternity boys were pretty damn cute and the constant parties were a plus if you knew the right people to get you in. Lois obliges because she's bored and tired of thinking about communism in the post World War II period, and knows the moment she slips her arm in Eric's as they begin to walk across her campus in her brand new shoes that this was a bad idea.

Eric is tall and handsome, has blonde hair and brown eyes, and they met in some stupid non-essential class they were both taking for an easy credit. She had promised The General that this would go well - her college career - no more drinking, no more partying. Lois promised her father that she was going to focus and become something.

And she had meant it. She honestly had. But Eric had asked her out for a drink the day she had met him, and Lois had said yes because he was cute, and he had really nice eyes. Afterwards she had decided that what her father didn't know can't hurt him.

Besides, Lois knows her father still sees her as the girl who drove home drunk from her senior prom and parked her car in the front lawn. Knocked over the mailbox that had apparently been in their family for years. The General hadn't trusted her before that, and any chance of him ever trusting her flew out the window afterwards.

So she goes to the party with Eric, catches sight of Lacy and someone who was most definitely not her boyfriend mid lip lock in some corner and smiles because it's only nine and almost everybody is already drunk. Lois isn't surprised in the least. She has been going to college parties since she was fifteen - she knows what to expect.

Lois drinks Tequila because she likes the way it burns her throat on the way down, makes her eyes water at the intensity of it. After two shots she has decided she's had enough, and after two hours she is bored and tried of Eric's not so subtle come-ons. Thoughts of Stalin and communism start to plague her, reminding her of the paper she still has to finish. She thinks of the promise she made to her father and how guilty she feels for breaking it.

The funny thing about it is, before Smallville, before Clark, the Kents, and Chloe she never would have given it a second thought. Lying wasn't lying until you got caught, she always used to say. It had worked pretty well for her too, that was until the lies started becoming more frequent, and less believable.

So she walks back to her dorm in her brand new shoes, leaves Eric behind with empty promises of calls that would never come.

It's nearly midnight when she falls onto her bed in exhaustion, kicks off her shoes and curls underneath her blankets. Remembers that she has to finish her paper before her eight AM class and groans when she realizes she is going to have to wake up early to do it.

**xXx**

Lacy and Chris - the guy who she wasn't making out with last night at the party - are taking a break from each other by noon Monday morning, and Lois finds Lacy looking pitiful in her pajamas, eating Ben and Jerry's and watching some stupid love story on the Lifetime channel.

Apparently she is heartbroken and apparently Lois is suppose to care.

But while Lois could be a bitch, she isn't completely heartless, and she refrains from commenting that Lacy and her not-so-secretive activities with a guy who wasn't her boyfriend were bound to catch up with her sooner or later. Instead she offers Lacy one of her double fudge brownies that had strategically been hidden under her bed so they wouldn't mysteriously disappear.

Mid-bite the peroxide blonde starts to cry hysterically. Luckily Lois is saved from uncertain death by the phone.

She nearly sprints to pick it up.

"Hello?"

"Hi."

The familiar voice immediately makes the brunette smile, and Lois shoves the container of brownies towards Lacy in a fruitless effort to shut her up.

"Well, what do we have here? Making time for me in your busy schedule, to what do I owe this pleasure?"

Chloe laughs. "I penciled you in, we only have five minutes before I have to move on to more important people."

"Five whole minutes?"

"Five whole minutes."

"So how is your dad?"

Chloe coughs for a minute, and Lois smiles at the fact the that she catches her friend in another lie - Gabe was out of town on business and wasn't due back until later this week. He'd told her father himself, who had then told her when their Sunday morning conversation had turned to silence.

"Fine, tired… he hates traveling," Chloe laughs again, more fake and less jovial this time. "You know him."

"Uh-huh."

"So how was your weekend?"

"Uneventful," Lois lets out a sigh. "Wrote a paper I could have written in the tenth grade, went to a party, came home, slept…" after a minute she continues, "I did by a new pair of shoes though."

"The black strappy ones?"

"Yeah," Lois looks over her shoulder and rolls her eyes as she watches Lacy eat another brownie. She starts to think that maybe she should have kept them hidden, she had become sort of attached to them. "I got brownies."

Chloe laughs loud and boisterously, It's infectious and Lois can't help but laugh too . "Clark sent them."

"Clark wrote me a three line note. Mrs. Kent sent them."

"It was Clark's idea."

"You are such a liar."

Chloe laughs again, "Maybe. You should call him though, tell him you got them."

Lois rolls her eyes as she crosses the room and takes the brownies away from Lacy. "Or you could just tell him yourself."

"A simple thank-you can go a long way, you know."

"You could just say thank-you for me."

"Don't be a baby, Lois. "

"I'll call Mrs. Kent and thank her."

"Lois…"

She recognizes that tone all to well, and knew she was about to hear the, what was now infamous, Clark- and- you- like- each- other- so- why- don't- you- just- admit- it speech. And with that in mind, Lois decides that it is time for her to get going.

"Well, would you look at the time, five minutes is almost up," she says and manages to make it sound humorous and sarcastic at the same time.

"Yeah, I should get going."

"Talk to you soon?"

"Of course."

She hangs up and tosses the object to the side. Eats a brownie and stares at the discarded phone.

There was absolutely no way, whatsoever, she was going to call him.

Even if it did mean no more double fudge brownies and chocolate chip cookies.

**xXx**

Halfway through Love Story she reaches for the phone. The need for those brownies and cookies really was just too strong, and she dials a number she vaguely knows from memory.

Clark picks up on the third ring, always in the kick of time.

"Hello?"

"Hi," she says it sort of sheepishly and she immediately hates the way she sounds. "It's Lois."

"Hey," Clark sounds thrown, shocked, and she figures it was an ordinary reaction. For some reason she never pictured Clark's phone line ever being busy. Chloe was usually with him, and he always just _went _to Lana, and besides, Clark just always seemed to just be there when you needed him. No questions asked.

"How are you?" Lois asks and it sound stupid even to her own ears. They were never two people for politeness. The usually cut right through that and went straight for the banter.

Only something seems different this time. Off. She can't put her finger on just what exactly it is, but it is there, and it is so noticeable she knows he has to see it too.

"Good," Clark answers. "You?"

"Oh you know," she replies in her usual flippant nature, "same old, same old. Corrupting the innocent, hitting the keggers, managing to attend a class or two here and there."

He laughs, and it sounds genuine enough and for some reason that makes her smile.

"Good to know some things never change."

Yes, she realizes, some things never do.

Things between her and Clark had never been off the BFF persuasion. She is pretty sure there is no way in hell they were going to be braiding friendship bracelets any time soon, but for some reason, things between them, as tense as they had always been, were never so bad that the conversation they were having should be as uncomfortable as it is now.

The goodbye between her and Clark had been awkward. Tense. It wasn't that they hated each other - Lois didn't hate him per se, and she was pretty sure he didn't hate her… well, that much anyway - they just pushed each others buttons. Tested the waters too much.

Lois holds a grudge because he broke her best friends heart.

Clark, well, Lois isn't sure why Clark holds a grudge but Lois is sure it's there.

"I just wanted to call," for some reason Lois finds herself swallowing thickly as she says this. She has always been polite, always remembers to say please and thank- you and is almost always respectful, but this, was hard. It is harder to say thank you, she finds, for something that meant a lot to you, but you didn't want to let on just how much. "I wanted to say thank you… for sending the brownies."

The fact that her own family barely cared enough to send a card on Birthdays, holidays, and all the trivial times in between that warranted them, but the Kent's could manage to send her brownies (which were _way _better than any card in her opinion) for something as insignificant as going away to school. Well, it meant something.

Clark stutters something incoherent and she is almost sure she hears the words 'it was my mom' in there somewhere, but she chooses to ignore it. For some reason, despite her denial to Chloe earlier that day, it did something funny to her insides thinking that maybe Clark actually cared. Well okay not cared _cared _but cared enough to send her brownies, cookies and a note.

"It was no big deal," he replies almost bashfully.

It is to her, but she is not about to say that out loud. Especially not to him.

Embarrassment is not something she is fond of in general, and for some reason despite her tough-girl-I-can-take-on-the-world-by-myself exterior, the idea of embarrassing herself in front of him is even less appealing.

Downright mortifying actually.

Lois did not even want to think about just what that meant.

There is something there, Lois can feel it-- feel that vibe, and she is pretty sure other people can _see _it. Chloe doesn't waste time mentioning it every chance she gets, but it doesn't escape Lois that that could only be a diversion to keep the conversation off of her. Off of Chloe's secrets. Chloe is just funny that way, she hates talking about herself-- especially when she is hiding something.

Falling into old routines, Lois puts up her guard and makes fun of him for something ridiculous and tiring, and throws in a _smallville _inthere just to irk him. He laughs and launches back an assault on her himself. They're finally on familiar ground - banter - and as comfortable as it is for her to be there, it nags at her in the back of her head that it is the only ground she has ever been on with him.

Yes, there's something there, simmering like an itch she can't scratch, but it will never amount to anything. Ever. Because honestly, she's always be her, and he'll always be him, and they'll always be the tinsy winsy little problems named Chloe and Lana… and well, it could never work anyway.

So Lois just lets it go.

He's not her type anyway.

(C) 2005


End file.
